Participant Bios

Pamela Albanese teaches Advanced Writing and Writing & Critical Reasoning in the USC Writing Program. Before joining the USC faculty in 2016, she taught at Pasadena City College and Hunter College, consulted in writing pedagogy at Brooklyn College and CUNY School of Law, and wrote for commercial and journalistic outlets. She earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2010. 

Jen Sopchockchai Bankard is an Associate Professor (Teaching) in the Writing Program, specializing in teaching with technology and, these days, post-A.I. pedagogy. She currently serves on USC’s A.I. Strategy Committee, and has, in the past, served as co-chair of the Committee on Information Services (CIS), a standing committee that advocates for the technological needs of USC’s faculty. Drawing from her studies in English literature, cinema studies, and expository writing, she teaches Writing 340: Advanced Writing, a course every undergraduate at USC is required to take. When she’s not teaching or thinking about technology in higher education, she enjoys writing film and television reviews and hosting a film podcast called The Long Take Review.  

Divya Benezette is a professional writing graduate student at Towson University. She earned her Bachelor of Science in English from TU as well. She is an avid reader, writer, and a poet. Divya has published poems in Prosetrics Literary Magazine, Clover + Bee, The Greyhound Journal, and elsewhere. She is a reader for ONLY POEMS magazine. She is passionate about diversifying the literature field and hopes both her research and creative writing can inspire change.

Codi Renee Blackmon (she/her) is a Lecturer in the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests are technical and professional communication, social justice, and race and ethnicity, with a particular focus on digital spaces. Codi Renee is a scholar-teacher-activist committed to anti-racist and culturally responsive pedagogy and inclusive, social justice-oriented practices in academic and community contexts. 

Dr. Gregory Brennen is Teaching Assistant Professor of English and Associate Director of Composition at Oklahoma State University, where he runs the apprenticeship program for new writing instructors. Prior to joining OSU, Brennen taught writing and literature at Duke, Elon, Georgia Tech, the University of Tampa, and the Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America. His research and teaching interests include serial media, pedagogy, nineteenth-century British literature, and multimodal composition. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Fortnightly Review, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom, and The Routledge Companion to Sensation Fiction. 

Dr. James Condon is a Professor in the University of Southern California Writing Program. He has taught first-year and advanced composition courses on sustainability, technology and social change, and cultural studies, as well as led graduate teacher training. He has presented papers at past composition and rhetoric symposia on matters ranging from contingent faculty labor and writing pedagogy education to advanced composition curricula. 

Neşe Devenot, PhD (they/them) is a Senior Lecturer in the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. Their courses have explored interdisciplinary topics including drugs in society, bioethics, comparative literature, and transdisciplinary collaboration. They received their BA in Philosophy and Literature from Bard College and their MA and PhD in Comparative Literature & Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania, where they received the Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Before joining Hopkins, Devenot completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Cincinnati’s Institute for Research in Sensing, Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Bioethics, and the University of Puget Sound’s Humanities Program. Their current scholarship examines the role of rhetoric and writing studies in identifying strategies of corporate capture in the interest of safeguarding public health. Most recently, they were first author and lead architect of a book-length investigative report, "The Psychedelic Syndicate: How Silicon Valley Used Veterans to Hijack the Psychedelic Industry."  

Dr. Suchi Dutta is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Technical Writing & Cultural Rhetoric in the Writing Program at Emory University. Her research broadly incorporates issues of representation and multimodal literacies in critical pedagogy. She has presented her work at major conferences including the CCCC, MLA, MELUS, and SAMLA. Her scholarship has appeared in Impost: A Journal of Creative and Critical Work, [Inter]Sections: The American Studies Journal, and other venues. Dr. Dutta is a co-author of the digital textbook project, English Composition I & II published by the Galileo Open Learning Materials that emphasizes the importance of rhetoric, process and multimodality in composition studies. In recognition of her commitment to teaching diverse texts in inclusive, accessible classroom environments, she was selected as one of three emerging minority scholars for the 2021 Emerging Scholars Symposium at Boston University. Most recently, she received the 2025 CCCC Scholars for the Dream Travel Award for her work in community-engaged writing.  

Mahmudul Hassan is a PhD student in English with a concentration in Rhetoric & Composition at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His research interests include first-year writing, composition pedagogy, political rhetoric, L2 writing, second language acquisition, and translanguaging.  

Nathalie Joseph teaches Advanced Argumentation and Lower-Division Argumentation for a variety of thematics, concentrating most recently on Writing for Pre-Law and International Relations.  

Noah Lamperti is an adjunct instructor at UMass Dartmouth. He teaches ENL 264, Communicating In the Sciences, as well as CAS 103, a retention-focused course for freshman students. He holds an M.A. in Professional Writing & Communication from UMass Dartmouth also. Through his teaching, he strives to show his science students strategies for translating specialized scientific and technical information to generalized, public audiences. When not teaching, Noah practices the same communications principles as a freelance author for several outdoor-oriented publications based in and around New England.  

Deanna Niles McConnell studies in the Towson University Master of Science in Professional Writing program. She has spent the last ten years creating enrichment classes and figuring out creative ways to reach students.  

Dr. Cynthia Pengilly is an Associate Professor of English at Central Washington University on ancestral Yakama Nation land. She has taught online professional writing courses for the last twenty years and maintains active industry engagement as technical writer and UX researcher to ensure pedagogical currency. She identifies as a disabled Black woman and serves as Affiliate Faculty in the Africana Black Studies and Accessibility & Disability Studies programs and teaches courses in Black studies, disability, accessibility, cultural rhetoric, medical/health rhetoric, and professional writing. Her research blends theory and practice, exploring pedagogical innovations in technical communication informed by ongoing industry experience.  

Ryan Prewitt is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research contends with the patterns, scenes, archives, and rhetorical characteristics of political radicalization as it occurs on and through digital media platforms. His book, Endless Artists: Meaning, Authorship and Ownership in the Generative AI Era, forthcoming with Bloomsbury, attempts to deconstruct popular controversies around the emergence of generative AI technologies.    

Amanda Pratt is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric of Science in the Department of English at Kennesaw State University, where she also serves as the Graduate Teaching Assistant Coordinator for the MA in Professional Writing program. Her research interests vary from psychedelic rhetoric to health humanities and writing program administration. She is from Buffalo, NY and did her graduate work in Reno, Nevada and Madison, Wisconsin.   

Amanda L Rioux is a part-time lecturer at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth who teaches Critical Writing & Reading, Business Communication and Technical Communication. Her expertise is pop culture writing with a specific focus on portrayals of grief & trauma in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the theme of her First-Year English courses. She is a writer and photographer with several publications (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and photography), and freelance copywriter and editor.  

Alisa Sánchez is an Associate Professor of Teaching in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California. Her writing courses focus on interdisciplinary explorations of the law and vital social issues. She received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Rhetoric with an emphasis in Gender and Women’s Studies and is deeply committed to the project of transforming higher education to be more just, equitable, and radiant.  

Wendy Stewart has been a lecturer in the Writing Institute since its founding in 2008 and is now the Director of the Writing Center. She earned her MA in English Literature from the University of Saskatchewan and, while pursuing her PhD at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, taught writing and reading in various disciplinary contexts. She has also taught suicide prevention and crisis intervention and communication. Her work inside and outside the academy aids her in working with writers in WRIT 110 and 111 and reinforces her commitment to helping people come to voice in scholarly, civic, and personal contexts. 

Alexis Teagarden is an Associate Professor of English & Communication at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where she also directs the First-Year English program. Her research interests include writing pedagogy and its intersections with intellectual risk-taking as well as faculty development and evaluation practices. Her work has been published in Rhetoric Review, Composition Studies, Kairos: a Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, WPA: Writing Program Administration, and several edited collections. She is the assistant book review editor of the Journal of Writing Assessment’s Reading List and is co-editing the Summer 2026 special issue of Composition Forum on the theme Risk, Failure, and the Teaching of Writing.  

Lauren Vallicella is an educator, writer, and dancer who has called Santa Barbara home for the past eighteen years. After completing a Ph.D. focusing on the intersections between European and American Dance History and English Literature, she spent five years teaching dance and English Language Arts at the elementary and high school levels before returning to higher education. Lauren currently holds the position of Lecturer in UCSB’s Writing Program. Her current research interests include affect and empathy in the classroom, choreography (writing with the body) as rhetoric, and the development of student voice. After working with students from preschool through college, Lauren is passionate about helping learners find their unique voices through arts education, critical inquiry, and self-expression. 

Roberta Wolfson is a Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University, where she teaches courses on mixed race identity, antiracist rhetoric, and ethnofuturist narratives. Her research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first century multiethnic US literatures, risk and security studies, comparative ethnic studies, and critical mixed race studies. She is published in academic journals like American Literature, College Literature, and MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States). Her book, Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the US Security State (Ohio State UP, 2024), considers how writers of color engage antiracist counternarratives to challenge the US security state’s violent practices.